The Lightning Bolt

by Kate Forsyth

  ‘We’ll get out the cowl and then open the doors and let him out,’ Luka said. ‘Come on! We have to be quick!’

  They could hear banging and crashing in the kitchen, and the sound of Fairnette crying, ‘Father!’ Emilia could only hope the soldiers would not notice the door to the oast house, which was white-panelled like the walls and easy to miss. It was a faint hope.

  Under the cover of the noise, Emilia and Luka quickly climbed to the next floor, and looked up at the tiny crack of light so far above them.

  ‘No help for it,’ Luka said.

  A rope and pulley was attached to the cowl so that it could be moved to catch the wind, funnelling air down to the drying hops below. Luka had to jump and jump before he could catch the end of the rope and draw it down towards him. Then Emilia swarmed quickly up it, and Luka and Zizi followed swiftly behind.

  The hole at the top was not much bigger than Emilia’s head, and the mossy red tiles of the roof fell away steeply. Emilia was afraid.

  ‘I’ll hold your ankles,’ Luka said. ‘Can you see the ivy growing up? It looked thick and strong. Try and grab it, hold on to it.’

  Emilia took a deep breath, then squeezed her head and shoulders out through the tiny hole. She had to twist and squirm to get her body through, and there was only the narrow windvane for her to cling to as she wriggled out. Luka had a tight grip on her ankles, but the roof was too tall. She could not reach the ivy growing over the gutter. So she kicked her feet free of Luka’s grasp, and slithered helplessly down towards the edge of the roof, making a great clatter as she went. Over the edge she went, at high speed, and the ground hurtled up towards her. In midair, she managed to grasp the top of the ivy. At once it pulled away from the house, but it had slowed her descent long enough for her to bring her body somersaulting round so her head was up and her feet down.

  Her feet found a thick branch. Panting, she clung to the side of the tower, and rested her hot face against her scratched and filthy arm.

  Zizi paused by her head, chattering derisively, then bounded easily down the wall to the ground. Slowly, her heart still hammering, Emilia followed.

  Luka catapulted himself through the tiny hole at the top of the tower with great speed and very little thought, and, like Emilia, found himself slithering down the steep slope of the roof with no way of slowing his descent. He saw the edge of the roof coming, grabbed it with one hand, and slid sideways, sending old tiles crashing down. Then he too found the ivy, and managed to grab it before he slid right over the edge. It was an old, stout plant, very strong and wiry. Luka was able to climb down it as easily as if it had been a tree, and soon found himself, rather scratched and shaken, on the ground.

  Quietly he dragged back the bolts and opened the door to the oast house. Rollo leapt up, whuffing with joy, and their hearts sank. They dragged him out, bolted the door again, then ran into the woods, Rollo bounding at their heels. Behind them, they could hear soldiers shouting.

  ‘Did they see us?’ Emilia panted.

  Luka shook his head. ‘They must’ve heard Rollo though. You’re a bad, noisy dog! We told you to be quiet.’

  Rollo wagged his tail happily.

  ‘It could be any old dog,’ Emilia said. ‘They’ve got no way of knowing it was Rollo barking.’

  ‘Coldham will know,’ Luka said grimly.

  They came to the glade where the beehives were, and stopped in sudden dismay.

  Someone had smashed open all the hives and stolen the honey.

  ‘No wonder the bees were in such a rage!’ Emilia said. ‘Look! They’re all wrecked.’

  Slowly the two children went forward, afraid of the bees. There were only a few, though, buzzing aimlessly about. They did not seem to know what to do. The hives lay broken on the ground, their contents hacked out. Honey dribbled from one like blood from a wound. Dead bees were stuck in it.

  Luka bent and examined the ground. ‘Milly, look!’

  Emilia came to see. There, in the soft ground before the beehives, were the marks of a big boot.

  And the large, heavy and unmistakable print of a bear.

  The two children stared at each other, scared and astounded.

  ‘It couldn’t be!’

  ‘Sweetheart? Here?’

  Emilia suddenly remembered something that Bob had said to her. So, are you gypsies? Have you come here for the horse fair too? You’re all early this year.

  She had paid no attention at the time, thinking only of the lightning bolt charm, but now she realised what it meant. ‘Luka! The Hearnes! They must be here! That boy, Bob, who sent us here, he said there were gypsies here for the horse fair. Remember, Sebastien said they come here to Horsmonden, for some fair in early September. They’ve come early . . .’

  ‘. . . because they knew we would be coming, to beg the Smiths for help.’ Luka was furious. ‘It was the Hearnes that told Coldham we were here!’

  ‘They wouldn’t,’ Emilia said feebly.

  ‘They must’ve!’ Luka snapped.

  ‘But why?’

  Luka shrugged. ‘For money? To save themselves from being arrested?’

  ‘But we’re kin. Sebastien and Beatrice are betrothed.’

  ‘Maybe they wish they’d never agreed to the marriage. Maybe they don’t want to be associated with gaolbirds.’ Luka’s voice was bitter.

  ‘But they’re Rom. The Rom don’t talk to constables.’

  ‘Do you really think they would risk getting on the wrong side of the law for our sake? What if Coldham threatened them, said he’d take away all their horses?’

  Emilia felt close to tears. ‘I can’t believe it! I thought Sebastien was our friend!’

  ‘It mightn’t have been Sebastien. It was probably that Cosmo fellow. He never wanted to help us in the first place.’

  They could not discuss it any more, because Rollo was looking back the way they had come, his hackles raised, growling deep in his throat. Then they heard a distant shout.

  ‘Come on, let’s go!’ Luka cried, and they ran on past the plundered beehives, and through the forest.

  All was quiet in Kingston Gaol.

  The women sat listlessly. They were so weak from lack of food that no one had the courage or the energy to tell stories any more, or sing, or play games with the little girls. The only sound was Noah’s constant cough, a sound that struck fear into Beatrice’s heart, for a young man had died of gaol fever only a few days earlier. Noah had begun to cough soon after, and now the harsh hacking sound punctuated the thick silence like the sound of paper being torn to bits.

  ‘Baba, Baba, I want to go home,’ Mimi suddenly wailed. ‘When can we go home?’

  ‘It won’t be much longer,’ Maggie said, her voice hoarse. ‘Never you fear. Milly and Luka will have us out of here, I promise you that, and then we’ll go back to the Great North Wood and we’ll have us a feast . . .’

  ‘What of?’ Sabina asked longingly.

  ‘Lamb stew with bacon and potatoes,’ Maggie said.

  ‘Lamb stew!’

  ‘Aye, tender and sweet as you can imagine, with baby peas and carrots, and a thick, rich gravy that you could smell for miles. We’ll have all our neighbours coming sniffing around our campfire, saying “Mmmm, mmmm, Maggie Finch, what are you a-cooking there?” And I’ll say, with a little wink, “Never you mind, Mr Squire, sir, you just sit down here on this old log and I’ll spoon you up a ladleful.” And the lord of the manor will be sitting there, gobbling down my stew, and never thinking it’s one of his own lambs that’s tasting so good.’

  The little girls laughed. ‘What else, Baba, what else?’ Mimi asked.

  ‘Why, there’ll be stuffed cabbage leaves, of course, and potatoes baked in their skins –’

  ‘With butter?’

  ‘Aye, with butter, of course,’ Maggie said promptly, although gypsies rarely had butter as it was not something housewives were very willing to part with.

  ‘And baked hedgehog?’ Sabina asked.

  ‘Aye, of course
! Emilia will catch us one each.’

  One each! Mimi and Sabina looked at each other in joy. As the littlest girls, they were always served last and had to rely on the generosity of their elders to get any of the choicest morsels.

  ‘When, Baba, when?’ Mimi demanded. ‘When will Emilia and Luka come?’

  ‘On the very last night of the month,’ Maggie said. ‘See, I’ve been scratching the days on the stone with my pipe. It’s been fifteen days since we were nabbed. That means we have five days left until the magistrates come to town. Milly and Luka will come before then.’

  ‘Only five days till we face the beaks!’ Lena cried in alarm.

  Maggie shot her a quick scowl, for the girls’ hopeful expressions had turned to dismay.

  ‘Only five days,’ Maggie said. ‘They’ll be here by then, and they’ll have us free, don’t you worry about that.’

  How? Beatrice wanted to ask, but she could not frame a word, the iron bar paralysing her tongue. Seeing how much happier the two little girls looked, she could only be glad she had not spoken, though her own doubt and despair weighed her down more heavily than iron chains. Luka and Emilia are only children, she thought. What can they possibly do to save us?

  Maybe Sebastien will come, she thought, and went off into a happy daydream where her betrothed broke down the doors of the gaol to rescue her, and she swooned prettily into his strong arms. The details of how he would overcome the guards, get them all out – including her crippled grandmother and her sick little brother – and make sure no one pursued them and dragged them back to prison, were not allowed to complicate the warm haziness of her daydream.

  Maggie, however, sat with her shoulders bowed and her eyes hooded, her cold pipe clamped between her teeth. As dusk closed down over the stinking little cell, she slowly took the pipe from her mouth and used it to scratch another mark on the wall.

  Another day gone . . .

  The Gypsy Camp

  ‘Find Sweetheart!’ Emilia panted, to Rollo. ‘Where’s our Sweetheart?’

  Rollo put his nose to the path and led the way, his plumy tail wagging. When the path came to a fork, he did not take the wider way, but led them scrambling up a rough, brambly path and over a rocky outcrop. Behind them they could hear the crashing of branches as the constables searched through the woods.

  The path led them back towards Horsmonden. Through gaps in the trees, they could see the dark chimneys of the foundry, belching out smoke, its windows glaring red. The hammer pond behind it gleamed strangely as the rays of the sinking sun struck through the bronze-coloured smoke. Clouds hung heavy over the horizon, an odd colour like a new bruise. Beyond the wood and the foundry was nothing but a bare blasted heath, pitted with shallow mines and mounded with ugly slagheaps.

  Crossing the heath towards the village was a huge, burly man in a dark coat, leading along a big brown bear. She went reluctantly, dragging back on the chain, and it brought tears to Emilia’s eyes to see how the man jerked sharply on the chain, hurting her sensitive nose. Sweetheart moaned and sat back on her hind legs, holding her nose in her paws, and the man whacked her with a heavy stick.

  ‘He’s hurting her!’ Emilia cried. ‘Why is he yanking her along like that? Where is he taking her?’

  ‘It’s one of the Smiths,’ Luka said angrily. ‘No one else is that big!’

  ‘Why does he have her? We left Sweetheart in the care of the Hearnes! They shouldn’t have given her to someone else.’

  Luka looked very grim. ‘We should never have done it. Uncle Ruben left Sweetheart in our care. We were wrong to trust the Hearnes, the treacherous, two-faced dogs!’

  Emilia suddenly remembered the card of the Knight of Swords. It had warned her of a treacherous man in their future. She had assumed it meant Coldham. Perhaps, though, it had meant someone else. Cosmo, or Felipe, or maybe even Sebastien. Her heart sank. She hated to think that her sister was betrothed to someone who could heartlessly betray them to a man like Coldham.

  ‘We need to get Sweetheart back,’ she said. ‘If Coldham knows she’s here, I bet he plans to hurt her somehow. He likes hurting things.’

  Luka stared at her in horror, then grabbed her hand, breaking into a run. He wondered how far ahead of them Sweetheart was. It could not be more than ten minutes. If they ran, they could catch her up, surely. But how were they to wrest her away from that huge man? He was ten times as strong as they were.

  As they ran, they kept their eyes on the big brown bear, so they saw how, when Sweetheart refused utterly to move any further, the big man thrust a hand into a big pot he carried and pulled out something that made the bear stretch out her snout and follow along eagerly.

  Honey! That was why Fairnette’s hives had been plundered!

  The path led down to a clearing not far from the road, where a small encampment of gypsy caravans was set up. Elaborately carved and gaily painted, the five caravans were drawn in a circle round a fire. A few tents had been set up beside them, no more than canvas slung over stripped saplings. Women in long, colourful skirts were busy about the fire, cutting up vegetables, stirring the big pot on its hook above the flames, mending clothes, or weaving baskets. A few dark, curly-headed children played a game of tip, and dogs lay under the caravans, panting.

  ‘There’s Alida!’ Emilia cried in joy, seeing her Arab mare tethered close by the wheel of the largest caravan. She clasped her hands together. ‘She looks thin,’ she whispered fiercely. ‘What have they been doing to her?’

  ‘Racing her half to death, most like,’ Luka replied.

  ‘We need to get her back,’ Emilia said. ‘But, oh! We can’t! For I promised they could have her until we rescued Baba and Beatrice! If I take her back, I’d have to give them back their silver horse charm.’ She began to weep bitterly.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ Luka whispered.

  ‘I want my horse,’ Emilia said fiercely. ‘I want her back! And Sweetheart! Oh, Luka, I’m scared! What do they mean to do with her, dragging her away like that?’

  She rubbed her eyes dry, and started down the path.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Luka asked in dismay.

  ‘I’m going to talk to them,’ she said. ‘I want to know what’s going on!’

  ‘Milly, wait!’

  But Emilia did not wait. With Rollo at her heels, she ran down the steep path towards the gypsy camp. Luka huffed out his breath in exasperation, swung Zizi back onto his shoulder, and followed.

  The dogs gave warning of their approach. Bawling a challenge, they threw themselves at Rollo, who growled menacingly. Emilia put her hand on his neck and said gently, ‘Sssh, boyos. All’s well.’

  The dogs stopped their noisy, headlong rush and their tails began to wag. It was impossible to tell whether it was the power of the silver horse charm that hung at Emilia’s wrist, or simply because the dogs recognised their smell. Emilia would have said one thing, Luka the other. Either way, the whole camp was made aware of their presence.

  Nadine got to her feet angrily. She wore a vibrant orange skirt, and gold hoops hung in her ears. ‘The Finch weans!’ she cried. ‘I can’t believe they have the cheek to show their faces here! After the trouble they’ve caused!’

  ‘What trouble?’ Luka demanded, scowling.

  Emilia put her hand on his arm. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Have we caused trouble? We didn’t mean to. What’ve we done?’

  ‘Nothing but bring the constables down upon us,’ Nadine cried.

  ‘Peace, Nadine!’ Julisa Hearne said. She was Sebastien’s mother, one day to be Beatrice’s mother-in-law. ‘You should not be here, weans,’ she said, glancing about her nervously. ‘This place is crawling with constables. They know you’re here, and are determined to nabble you. If they see you here, we’ll all be in trouble. Go on, get away while you can!’

  ‘How do the constables know we’re here?’ Luka demanded. ‘No one knew but Sebastien! Why did he betray us?’

  ‘Maybe he thinks better of marrying into your tribe,’ Nadine c
ried. ‘Maybe he sees there’s a better wife to be had closer to home! Maybe –’

  ‘That’s enough, Nadine!’ Julisa said. She looked at Emilia with troubled eyes. ‘I’m sorry, my weans, but that thief-taker has it in for you bad. I don’t know what you’ve done to annoy him, but he’s determined to drag you back. We had no choice but to do as he said. I swear we didn’t do it happily.’

  ‘ You mightn’t have,’ Nadine muttered.

  ‘Get going while you can. There’s nothing good for you here,’ old Janka said, folding her arms across her thin chest. She was Sebastien’s grandmother and the one who had given Emilia the charm of the silver horse. ‘If he finds you, he’ll take you back for the gallows, mark my words.’

  ‘But why? Why does he hate us so?’ Emilia asked, almost in tears.

  Janka let her hands fall to her side. Her shoulders rose and fell in a sigh. ‘They hate us because they fear us,’ she answered softly. Emilia met her piercing black eyes. She had often heard her grandmother say the same thing. She had never understood it. Why would the gorgios fear the Rom? The gorgios all had houses and food and money and shoes, and the right to whip the homeless from their parishes. The Rom had nothing but their wits and their quicksilver tongues and the roads unrolling under their feet. What was there to fear in that?

  ‘Come on, Emilia, let’s go,’ Luka said. ‘We need to find Sweetheart!’

  ‘Where did that man take her?’ Emilia asked miserably. ‘And why?’

  Janka said nothing. She turned and walked away, her shoulders bowed. Julisa bent and picked up her mending, unable to meet their eyes.

  Nadine laughed. ‘Don’t you know? Why, I thought the whole valley knew! They haven’t seen such fine entertainment since Cromwell came to power.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Emilia clenched her hands together.

  Nadine swung round in a swirl of orange. In a few steps, she had seized a piece of paper from the ground and thrust it in Emilia’s and Luka’s faces. ‘These are stuck up on every tree between here and Tunbridge Wells,’ she said mockingly. ‘They should get a fine turnout.’